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What Happens when your hero is defeated?

In COH you are teleported to a hospital away from the conflict.
There is no penalty, but you pay for the defeat with a percentage point drain on experience earned for a while afterwards. I liked the system. It worked.

Izzy wrote:
I don't recall, but i'm assuming it will be close to what CoH/V did?
Would you rather see the XP Debt be paid up front as a one time smaller fee, instead of installments with Interest? ;D

No one time fee. That could result in the loss of a level. I prefer the drain on XPs earned afterwards.
Leveling slower is far preferable to the loss of a level.
I'm hoping it will be close to COH. I'm just afraid NCSoft will be jerks and play copyright with us and force dramatically different systems,

Highly unlikely to be fair. I don't see other MMO's out there going after each other for repair costs being implemented in a game (as an example)

—

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Izzy wrote:
I don't recall, but i'm assuming it will be close to what CoH/V did?
Would you rather see the XP Debt be paid up front as a one time smaller fee, instead of installments with Interest? ;D

No one time fee. That could result in the loss of a level. I prefer the drain on XPs earned afterwards.
Leveling slower is far preferable to the loss of a level.
I'm hoping it will be close to COH. I'm just afraid NCSoft will be jerks and play copyright with us and force dramatically different systems,

As far as I know they can't get a copyright on that since it has no "artistic element", it's a utilitarian system. The only copyright here would be for the exact source code NCSoft used to implement it.

Also the XP Debt was a thing in Everquest II and I believe Guild Wars, and NCSoft didn't go after either of those.

Seeing as NCsoft own ArenaNet it would be rather dumb for them to go after themselves....

Side note: The Guild Wars death penalty is to the Health/energy attributes and not to actual XP gain, and the debt can be counteracted by defeating certain mobs (basically boss mobs)[1]. If you have no penalty when you defeat a boss mob, you get a moral bonus (basically inverse penalty) and they balance each other out....

[1] This is the "short" version. In reality, resetting the mission (ie leaving the mission) can also reset the death penalty, although you will have to start the mission from scratch. And whilst Death Penalty and Moral Boost are similar, they are not *Exact* opposites. Death penalty has just one source (dying) and caps at -60%, Moral Boost has *multiple* sources and can only go up to +10%

—

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

In DDO some of your equipment will be damaged (IGC sink) and you suffer some ability penalties until you recover. Also there's a death penalty to XP rewarded at the end of the mission. It's minimal, and you can avoid it altogether by resetting if you're willing to start the mission over from the beginning. Besides that of course if you're soloing or the whole team is wiped, you have to recover at a tavern and walk back to the mission. Hurry or the mission will reset. It's a pain but it's no big deal.
XP debt was a long term pain in the @#$. I really don't see any need for that. Especially since at higher levels it takes SOOOO long to level already that you can actually feel yourself growing old waiting for it (unless you farm like a tractor).
Of course you all know I don't like levels anyway, so it probably doesn't matter what I say about XP, but I like the DDO model a lot better.

Since CoT won't have any "equipment" to damage or "abilities" to be penalized I don't really see how things like that could really apply here. It's fine to look at other games to see if there are things that can be borrowed from them to make CoT better, but when you do that you need to keep in mind whether or not those things would even make sense here in the first place.

That said I see no reason why CoT would need to work all that differently from CoH with regard to how death penalties worked. It wasn't "broke" so why fix it?

Current design as defeat itself being its own detractor. We are using a system of challenges to earn achievements in both missions and street sweeping. Remaining undefeated being a challenge means less bonuses earned from achievements. Medical evacs take more time away from combat resulting in less rewards being earned in a given time frame.

Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.

What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

Current design as defeat itself being its own detractor. We are using a system of challenges to earn achievements in both missions and street sweeping. Remaining undefeated being a challenge means less bonuses earned from achievements. Medical evacs take more time away from combat resulting in less rewards being earned in a given time frame.
Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.
What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

interesting approach - are you weighting this for different classes? someone who's a tank-ier sort of build is going to have a distinct advantage with regards to remaining undefeated vs someone who's more of a ranger/blaster, for obvious reasons. Personally, i wouldn't care since it would just be a function of the toon I build and i'd know that going in, but there will inevitably be those who cry 'no fair'.

Still love the down-the-line option MWM has in the works, that should prove quite fun.

Lothic, come on, use a little imagination. We might not have ability scores but we do have abilities (Powers) and penalties can be applied in a variety of ways. Or do I have to call them debuffs for you to know what I'm talking about?
And of course we'll be carrying stuff around it's called salvage, and enhancements. Damage could make them expire faster or just not work until they're repaired.
Repairs can be done by a variety of merchants. They're a lot cheaper than replacements.
Some equipment can't be damage, but basically anything you can buy at a regular shop (not the auction house) can break.

BUT of course none of that really matters because:

Tannim222 wrote:

What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

Current design as defeat itself being its own detractor. We are using a system of challenges to earn achievements in both missions and street sweeping. Remaining undefeated being a challenge means less bonuses earned from achievements. Medical evacs take more time away from combat resulting in less rewards being earned in a given time frame.
Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.
What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

Thank you!
Yet another reason I love this MWM...its made by people who love the game as much as I do.
I am so glad I found this site, I simply cannot wait!

Lothic, come on, use a little imagination. We might not have ability scores but we do have abilities (Powers) and penalties can be applied in a variety of ways. Or do I have to call them debuffs for you to know what I'm talking about?
And of course we'll be carrying stuff around it's called salvage, and enhancements. Damage could make them expire faster or just not work until they're repaired.
Repairs can be done by a variety of merchants. They're a lot cheaper than replacements.
Some equipment can't be damage, but basically anything you can buy at a regular shop (not the auction house) can break.
BUT of course none of that really matters because:
Tannim222 wrote:

What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

YAYY! Tannim You're my hero!

My guess is that none of that was ever going to happen because, as I stated, we don't really have "equipment" or "ability scores" in CoT. Think about it. Adding debuffs and "damageable salvage" as death penalties to CoT when they didn't exist in CoH? Come on Paladin...

BTW, I have plenty of imagination where it comes to theorizing about what might happen with CoT. My problem, I suppose, is that I've been playing and/or GMing games like this (computer and PnP based) for 30+ years now and that much experience tends to inform me on what's more likely to happen here than not. Imagination's fine, just not when it leads to things that are relatively unlikely.

But you acted as if were simply undoable.
Which it isn't.
And the reason you gave was wrong
and just showed a lack of imagination.
If you'd said " Adding debuffs and "damageable salvage" as death penalties to CoT when they didn't exist in CoH? Come on Paladin..." in your original reply I'd have bought it, it would have been a fine reply,
but that's not what you said and now you're just changing your objections to avoid admitting your mistake.
Then you want to wave some creativity credentials around like I never should have challenged you.
Come on.
It wasn't necessary, I never questioned your imagination, I just told you to use it.

When CoT will not have equipment like DDO or ability scores like DDO how in the world can you have death penalties based on them in CoT? If that's not the very definition of "simply undoable" I don't know what is.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

Which it isn't.

I think I've cleared that up in the last couple of sentences I just wrote.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

And the reason you gave was wrong and just showed a lack of imagination.

Basing suggested death penalties on nonexistent game elements is not a positive example of "imagination". It's borderline insane.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

If you'd said " Adding debuffs and "damageable salvage" as death penalties to CoT when they didn't exist in CoH? Come on Paladin..." in your original reply I'd have bought it, it would have been a fine reply,

*faceplant* I added that line because I was literally just summarizing what YOU SAID for emphasis because those were the things you tried to come up with once you realized what you first said about non-existent equipment and ability scores was silly.

Notice that I was QUESTIONING your ideas of imposing debuffs and "damageable salvage" as death penalties when those kinds of things were not imposed in CoH. Why on earth would we need death penalties like that in CoT in the first place? What "problem" does that solve to warrant making death penalties that much more annoying?

The giveaway on that was the phrase "Come on Paladin..." which should have underscored my basic confusion/disbelief about what you said to begin with. Basically you first suggested CoT death penalties be based on nonexistent elements (equipment and ability scores) and then you FOLLOWED THAT UP with a second suggestion to impose death penalties on things that I can almost assure you no one would want to suffer (debuffs and "damageable salvage"). No one else has asked to make sure CoT's death penalties are extra annoying - why do you want them that way?

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

but that's not what you said and now you're just changing your objections to avoid admitting your mistake.

No, I'm just highlighting that YOUR first suggestions were impossible and then that YOUR second suggestions would be horribly unpopular and annoying. Both of these things were YOUR ideas/mistakes.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

Then you want to wave some creativity credentials around like I never should have challenged you. Come on.

I'm actually far too humble to suggest I know everything about everything, or even everything about how to make MMOs work well.

But again I must sadly admit that I do have decades of experience with playing and designing game elements like this for PnP games that I have run in the past. While I don't know what the absolute perfect death penalty mechanics for CoT might turn out to be I'm at least reasonably sure they won't be anything like DDO's (for what should have been obvious reasons) and I'm also reasonably sure they won't be based on things like debuffs and "damageable salvage" because ideas like that were fully rejected by the Devs of CoH and there's absolutely no reason that would change for CoT. I'm not really asking for much here - just use a little common sense next time.

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

It wasn't necessary, I never questioned your imagination, I just told you to use it.

Oh I appreciate that you were never questioning my imagination. Then again I never saw the need to "imagine" off the wall things for CoT's death penalties in the first place. Again what "problem" are you trying to solve here? Why would CoT's death penalties have to be radically different from CoH's? How was the way CoH handled things so broken that we'd need to look to a game like DDO to fix it? Next time you need to start by asking yourself questions like these first.

I can understand that you might not have liked XP debt as a form of death penalty in CoH and were apparently trying to come up with some alternatives for it. But seriously, when you compare XP debt to any of the other things you were talking about XP debt is a trivial speedbump at best. At worse people grumbled at XP debt, but I've always heard them scream bloody murder at being debuffed or having to suffer any kinds of permanent loot damage. Ever heard the phrase "lesser of two evils"? XP debt is definitely the least annoying of all the alternative forms of death penalty I've ever heard of. Why try to "fix" something you don't like by suggesting a replacement for it that most people would consider to be like 10x worse?

It may seem counter intuitive to you but I used to know people in CoH who did everything they could to slow down how fast they earned XP. For them they actually used XP debt as a tool to make sure they didn't outlevel content. Obviously that wasn't how everyone dealt with XP debt, but I just know there would be people who'd actually be upset to not have it in CoT.

For what it's worth I can actually see that, in your own way, you were trying to come up with some "outside the box" ideas for CoT and from that point of view I would think that free-flowing imagination would be a fine thing to use. I simply don't think the death penalty mechanics of CoT needed quite that much randomly applied "imagination" to begin with.

Current design as defeat itself being its own detractor. We are using a system of challenges to earn achievements in both missions and street sweeping. Remaining undefeated being a challenge means less bonuses earned from achievements. Medical evacs take more time away from combat resulting in less rewards being earned in a given time frame.
Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.
What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

This is an interesting idea. It occurs to me that the loss of potential achievements would, to some people, equate to the same thing as "losing" those achievements (based on the fact that the ability to make the achievement is now gone).

If a person was trying to do a specific mission and trying to make a "clean" run, with no defeats and getting all the achievements available, or specific ones the player is shooting for, would people be able to start the mission, then, if they get defeated, just exit and restart so as to get a fresh chance at a "clean" run?

Because it occurs to me that that's what I would do. If I face-plant early on in a mission, I'd just reset it and start again. If it happened later on in a long mission, I might think twice about that.

You could also have achievements like "defeat Seige and Nightstar at the same time (approx)" only to have people fail that one at the very end by defeating one a little too soon or too late. And this brings up the question of being able to repeat ANY mission, even one you succeeded on, just to get the achievements you missed the first time.

I feel like this makes missions in general more repeatable, which I like. Very interesting.

Lothic it's really hard to be civil in replying to you sometimes.
Your entire reply was pure venom.

The suggestion I made was in fact doable by simply translating the terms from one game to another
a process that requires a little imagination
Penalties to ability scores translate to debuffs it's that simple
You could have figured it out on your own if you hadn't been so quick to dismiss something that looked a little different to you
Creativity involves finding a way
Shooting everything down (Which frankly is all I've ever seen you do) requires nothing but knee jerk reactions.

A appreciate that sometimes we need a devil's advocate but if that's the role you want to assume for yourself, then at least put some thought into it. Challenge an idea based on serious issues it might bring up, but don't just automatically shoot it down because you're not willing to understand how it was intended to work.

Current design as defeat itself being its own detractor. We are using a system of challenges to earn achievements in both missions and street sweeping. Remaining undefeated being a challenge means less bonuses earned from achievements. Medical evacs take more time away from combat resulting in less rewards being earned in a given time frame.
Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.
What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

Thanks for answering this for us Tannim, looking forward to the missions changing due to deaths. Will you be using the hospital approach? I enjoyed that in CoX, but I also really liked the missions that had the spawns at the start of the mission. That was pretty dern convenient!

—

The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One

I'm not sure I'd want our clean and simple 'Defeat Effect' to be cluttered up with extra factors that were never planned to be in this game. No need to 'translate' them from other games, since the game we have is plenty good.

Even something as simple as putting an IGC cost onto wanting to go IMMEDIATELY to the Hospital, instead of waiting a few/several seconds to take the FREE transport to the Hospital would have value as a sink. Simply have a rolling countdown in IGC cost to Hospital quickly so that Players can choose how much IGC they want to sacrifice in order to get faster service. Let people decide for themselves which they value more ... IGC or speed. If IGC is more valuable to you, simply wait and take a free trip to the Hospital. If time is more valuable to you, simply pay the IGC cost and get to the Hospital faster.

You could even use a simple formula scale to determine the IGC cost for this:

(Character Level - seconds since Defeat)3 = IGC cost to go to Hospital RIGHT NOW

Set formula to yield integer values only and have a lower bound of zero IGC.

So the rule of thumb then becomes that the higher your Character Level, the more costly quicker Hospital services become. However, if you ... as a Player ... would prefer to sacrifice TIME instead of IGC, you have the OPTION to do so.

So if you're a cheapskate with "no health insurance plan" ... you may want to wait after being Defeated before choosing to go to the Hospital. If you've got more IGC than you know what to do with and can afford the "cadillac plan" ... you don't have to wait before getting revived at a Hospital and returning to play.

In other words ... choose your own Death Penalty, either TIME or IGC (or both if you'd prefer something in the middle of the two extremes).

Since the formula given above is an exponential one running on cubic values, there is a rather obvious decay curve and diminishing returns set of choices built into it as the clock ticks. So "time is money" but the exchange rate of time to money is always changing as the time elapsed since Defeat increases. This then gives Players the opportunity to choose WHEN they want to go to the Hospital, and makes that choice as important as deciding to go to the Hospital AT ALL, rather than simply using a Wakie right where they are (which would cost zero IGC).

But then again ... what do I know about these things?

—

Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

It will probably not go that route as it is prohibitive to allowance for rl occurrence, chatting with team members, checking if Reserves are available to self rez, etc..
Hence the sink would come from getting an immediate return to location from the hospital. Cutting down the travel time back to action by paying an igc cost.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

It will probably not go that route as it is prohibitive to allowance for rl occurrence, chatting with team members, checking if Reserves are available to self rez, etc..
Hence the sink would come from getting an immediate return to location from the hospital. Cutting down the travel time back to action by paying an igc cost.

A Hover taxi bot parks in front of the hospital? :D
Takes you to your mission.. but charges more if it crosses Tole lines?

the Taxi bot even takes into account restricted air space, where state of the art drones police the airspace above the Zig, and take the longer way around? ;)

I dont mind gear degredation (I call gear "training" but no matter how hard i try it wont catch on)

I'm going to go ahead and say that I hate spawn points so i'd rather just allow people to self-rez after a certain amount of time from the space they fell. Or be given the option to go to their home housing map ( which has a chosen map point) once you've unlocked housing

Another element (and this is purely a down the line possibility) in that in missions being defeated can cause something to change; spawns go on alert, take defensive positions, or rush to complete their business adding a timed element. Or leave a clue behind changing the next connected mission in some way.
What won't happen: no loss of effectiveness, no xp loss, no debt penalty to xp.

I really like this part ! :) Especially the first one !
Nevertheless, i think it could be a entire part of some missions and not only in a defeate case. Being defeated is part of the adventure AND the gameplay for other. Till one is up, the fight keep on going and the death could (sometimes ^^) be defeated. Modifying the mission if we are defeated is a good thing. Now, the question is : in which way ? In an easiest or a more diffcult way ? With an advantage because the mission is too hard ? with a disadvantage for the foes because you are too weak for them ?

I kind of like the XP debt. There should be consequences, especially if there are players that just rush in with reckless abandon. You have to know how to play to your characters strengths to win the fights. I know defeat can't always be helped, but it can be minimized by playing smart.

I kind of like the XP debt. There should be consequences, especially if there are players that just rush in with reckless abandon. You have to know how to play to your characters strengths to win the fights. I know defeat can't always be helped, but it can be minimized by playing smart.

I'm inclined to agree. I never found CoHs system to be overly punishing. It penalized you without making the game so frustrating you quit. In some games, such as FFXI, you actually lost experience, and could sometimes lose a level if you died too much. I found that system needlessly harsh.

In the end, most penalties boil down to "time". You have to run back to your mission from the hospital if you don't have a way to rez; you have to run back through the parts of the mission you've already completed. It takes you longer to get the exp for your next level, etc. The thing is, most time penalties other than XP debt can be minimized or nearly eliminated by teammates or abilities.

I don't think the game should ever move a character backward. Losing levels or having all your gear wiped out, things like that are incredibly frustrating, especially for new or casual players, who are apt to wonder "what's the point?" I think that would be a way to discourage quite a few people from sticking with the game at all.

I liked the XP debt system in CoH. As a new player, it gave me an palpable incentive to get better, without discouraging me too much. I know especially in the early days of the game, some players simply ignored it, or got themselves killed so often that they lived in "perma-debt". That was just a fact of life for them. But my desire to avoid debt encouraged me to improve as a player, not just to try and max-level my characters.

However CoT eventually handles death penalties, I think it needs to be enough of an inconvenience to players that it's worthwhile for them to make that effort to get better, rather than having death be such a triviality that mindless button-mashing is a more effective approach to leveling than "playing smart".

Safehouse wrote:
I never found CoHs system to be overly punishing.
Tell that to the Blasters who lived in Perma-Debt back before Debt got nerfed into the ground and then through the ground.

True I wasn't in the game pre-debt nerf. I should say that my personal experience with the exp debt system was not bad. Except the first time I experienced the frostfire battle and just keep charging back in.

Come to think of it, I was a blaster at the time. I wonder if there's some sort of correlation...

Personally, it doesn't matter to me. I don't like being defeated and I do everything in my power to avoid it. But it doesn't ruin gameplay for me when I am defeated, I just get more determined. So, actually, I guess that means it does matter to me a bit, in that I wouldn't want an overly harsh penalty. I just don't need it and it would be a bit of a bummer.

Plus, people play the way they want to play. What people find fun varies a lot. On one of the first missions I went on in CoH with the friend of mine who got me into playing, we were getting killed over and over. He was an energy blaster and thought he was a scrapper.

After the 5th time he face planted I said "we're getting slaughtered" and he replied "what do you mean"? I said "you just face planted. Again. Like a $#@*%." He said, "nah, that didn't happen. You just come back."

Now, that gameplay attitude baffles me and I could never enjoy it, but he loved the game and was enjoying himself. He might even have quit if the game rubbed his nose it in too much when he was defeated.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's probably good MWM isn't overly legislating to people how seriously they should or shouldn't take defeat. Let 'em enjoy the game how they want.

Personally, it doesn't matter to me. I don't like being defeated and I do everything in my power to avoid it. But it doesn't ruin gameplay for me when I am defeated, I just get more determined. So, actually, I guess that means it does matter to me a bit, in that I wouldn't want an overly harsh penalty. I just don't need it and it would be a bit of a bummer.
Plus, people play the way they want to play. What people find fun varies a lot. On one of the first missions I went on in CoH with the friend of mine who got me into playing, we were getting killed over and over. He was an energy blaster and thought he was a scrapper.
After the 5th time he face planted I said "we're getting slaughtered" and he replied "what do you mean"? I said "you just face planted. Again. Like a $#@*%." He said, "nah, that didn't happen. You just come back."
Now, that gameplay attitude baffles me and I could never enjoy it, but he loved the game and was enjoying himself. He might even have quit if the game rubbed his nose it in too much when he was defeated.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's probably good MWM isn't overly legislating to people how seriously they should or shouldn't take defeat. Let 'em enjoy the game how they want.

Thing is, a game can also be too easy. I, for one, wouldn't enjoy a system that doesn't adequately discriminate between success and failure.

The degree of challenge doesn't just impact players as individuals, it's also a key factor in what emerges as the game's culture. You allude to that in your comments. What if that team-mate's attitude was the prevailing attitude among the playerbase? Would teaming up be less fun? It would for me. Heck, just playing would be less fun for me if dying didn't matter. There's no sense of accomplishment if there's not a real sense of challenge getting there. Reasonable penalties make that challenge tangible, not just theoretical.

I think any game needs to balance between challenge and frustration. But "too easy" can be just as bad for a game as "too hard", whether we're talking about defeat penalties or any other aspect.

The devs know all this, of course, and it's going to be interesting to see what sort of balance they arrive at. I thought CoH had a pretty good system for that. Not everyone agrees, and CoH softballed a lot of stuff as time went on.

We'll see what happens. But like I said, I'll prefer a system that doesn't take progress away, but puts some sort of tangible penalty for defeat (or a bonus for surviving undefeated, if you like) that makes going unbeaten in a mission a -practical- advantage for players, as well as an aesthetic goal.

In CoH, a fight could go badly and the team could still recover without losing anything significant. That was the advantage of having people with resurrection powers on the team. Later on, with the ability to trade and combine for Awakens, you could have a complete team-wipe and still not be forced to leave the instance. Players developed strategy and tactics to make this recovery easier and they could, then, afford to play much closer to the bleeding edge of failure. Yes, we still suffered Exp. Debt, but it was easily manageable.

I remember, at one point, it was possible to lose levels due to Debt and I can see clear arguments for and against that. For instance, if you've accidentally out-leveled your Enhancements and now they give you nothing, then it's very easy to be defeated by opponents. Similarly, leveling might put you into the next tier of enemies before you're prepared to deal with them. In those cases, de-leveling would put you back into the 'safe' zone. However, if you leveled and trained and slotted up and went out to face the tigers, then slipped and de-leveled, you could lose the effectiveness of everything you'd just invested in.

None of those situations were fun, but adjustments were made, Dayjobs were introduced, Exemplaring, and other systems to make Debt recovery nearly painless.

I expect the Devs will put similar systems into CoT, which will soon mature and be comfortable for everyone.

What if that team-mate's attitude was the prevailing attitude among the playerbase? Would teaming up be less fun?

In my case I soloed a lot, or duoed with my son or wife. When I wanted a team I usually started one and, being a tank/brute, I mostly led and dictated the tactics, so I didn't have to worry as much about it.

That said, I could see how the prevailing attitude could be a lot more important to a player who predominantly joins teams. And MWM did seem to use more failure/team wipe penalties in the Incarnate content.

Just no lockout/timeout please. Bust out/break out is fun, but not lockout/timeout. Nothing is less fun than not being allowed to play. That's why timeout is used as punishment. Let me play the freaking game.

What happens in most anime's when the hero is defeated? A friendly passerby takes them in and helps them back on their feet. And then the hero usually ends up saving their life later on. Take for instance, Goku and Upa or Goku and Suno:

I feel like this would be a pretty cool idea for what happens after your character "dies"

—

The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One

In COH you are teleported to a hospital away from the conflict.
There is no penalty, but you pay for the defeat with a percentage point drain on experience earned for a while afterwards. I liked the system. It worked.
How will defeat work in CoT?

In an attempt to drag this topic back from silliness towards seriousness (I know, I know, the effort is unwanted), perhaps we ought to be thinking about this subject in broader terms.

*IF* the Death Penalty for City of Titans is going to be structured as a DEBT to pay off (essentially a "tax" on future earnings, rather than on current and/or past earnings) ... then the next set of questions become a matter of "how much?" and whether there ought to be any mitigating factors in the Quantity of Debt that gets heaped upon your Character.

In City of Heroes, if your Character was Defeated ... Debt was imposed immediately, before you even finished hitting the floor. How you "got up" from that Defeat didn't matter in the slightest. You could be rezzed by another Player's Power(s), you could self-rez using your own Power(s), you could use a "Wakie" Inspiration, you could be teleported to your Base (hospital) or teleport to a Zone Hospital. It didn't matter which of these choices was selected, they all wound up assessing the same Debt Penalty on your Character after a Defeat.

Sure, there were some Invention Sets that offered a "booby prize" useless modifier of reduced Debt (like -2% Debt as a Set Bonus ... woo ...), which everyone Ignored Heavily™ because such modifiers were basically worthless (as intended?), but there really weren't any ways to meaningfully modify the amount of Debt you had to pay off after being Defeated. This meant that HOW you "got back up" after being Defeated was almost entirely beside the point. The differences between methods of "getting back up" were mostly about the TIME penalty of getting back to the fight. A "Wakie" Inspiration would let you get up from wherever your body was lying around, as would use of Powers on Defeated PCs, but Wakies often involved a sort of rez sickness that meant you were vulnerable for a short time after getting up. Hospital trips (either zone or base) cost time to travel back to the Mission Instance and navigate back to where the fight had taken place, so it was more of a "distance penalty" than the other options.

To be honest, although this system "works" (per se) ... it's just a little bit too One Size Fits All and one dimensional its aspects. The incentives to use different options (Powers vs Inspirations vs Hospitals) are just too marginal to make any of the choices routinely superior ENOUGH over the others to make for a real pecking order. As a result, Rez Powers were more a matter of convenience than a matter of advantages in comparison, particularly when it came to the matter of How Much Debt got imposed upon your Character after having been Defeated.

So ... here's what I propose for City of Titans.

Basically take the framework of the Debt system used in City of Heroes ... and tweak it ... so that How You Get Up makes a difference in how much Debt gets applied to your Character after a Defeat. Here's the basic "pecking order" notion I have for how much Debt to impose upon Characters.

Self-Rez Power

Rez Others Power

"Wakie" Inspiration

Hospital (SG Base, Alignment type or Zone)

In this framework, Self-Rez Powers impose the smallest Debt Penalty for having been Defeated.

Using the Self-Rez Power is what imposes the Debt Penalty, and the size of the penalty is symbolically token. It's not "zero" ... but it's "nearly zero" so as to be a very light, to the point of being negligible, burden to pay off. The intent here is to make Self-Rez Powers have value in and of themselves compared to the alternatives, and that the increased value comes (in part) from having the lightest possible Debt Penalty and a lack of Rez Sickness when used.

Rez Others Powers will impose a slightly higher Debt Penalty than Self-Only Rez Powers so as to not overshadow the advantages gained from Self-Rez. If a Rez Others Power is used as a Self-Rez (theoretically possible at this stage of development) then the Debt Penalty assessed follows the above Self-Rez formula. Some Rez Others Powers may involve additional setbacks than just assessing Debt on the $Target, such as a (brief) Rez Sickness or a possible "crash" in HP/Endurance after a duration, depending on the Powerset the Power comes from so as to give variances between Powersets (and Archetypes using those Powersets) to keep things from falling into a rut of One Size Fits All™ for this sort of thing.

"Wakie" Inspirations impose a moderate Debt Penalty and all of them involve a duration of debilitating Rez Sickness.

Hospitals impose the largest Debt Penalty assessed but do not have any Rez Sickness. Hospital "services" can be provided by SG Bases, by Hospitals aligned with particular Alignment axes (Doc Meat Wagon's Chop Shop, The Police Hospital, The Good Samaritan Hospital, etc.) or just simply be a Hospital for a particular zone in the city.

Easiest way to think of this would be in terms of ratios, like this:

Self-Rez Power = Basic Debt Penalty x1

Rez Other Power = Basic Debt Penalty x4

"Wakie" Inspiration = Basic Debt Penalty x9

Hospital Recovery = Basic Debt Penalty x16

So what you wind up with is a simple 1:4:9:16 set of multipliers to whatever the "basic" amount of Debt to assess will be ... and for that, the easiest thing that I can think of is ... 2% of the XP to advance 1 Level (including at the Level Cap, extrapolating upwards beyond the Level Cap).

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Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.

I like positives like Tannim222's post. I'm thinking mission superlatives (in addition to objectives).
NO TEAM WIPE
NO TEAM DEATHS
NO PERSONAL DEATHS
These could feed into badges or other systems. For completionists this could be a strong motivator for not dying.
Also I think Tannim222 mentioned an IGC cost to transport back to the action. I like that idea. Not that I want to resurrect an old topic, but there do need to be IGC sinks.

I'm generally in favor of having some consequences for player defeat, not only because it causes people to try to avoid defeat (instead of using the Preferred Play Style(TM) of intentionally taking a dive to finish content faster is some cases, with no realized loss or drawback for the diver...), but also because it causes there to be some limits, rules, etc that can then be mitigated by various other optional things we might put into the game. While it's true that debt-reducing gear was terrible in CoX, that's mainly because of the way it was implemented. The "less debt" ability on the IOs was occupying the place of what was perceived to be another buff you might have gotten had it not been there. since less debt doesn't make you any more efficient in an actual fight, you don't want that if the price you pay for it is that you don't get some other buff that might actually help your combat effectiveness. Had they simply added "debt reduction" to purples or HamiOs in addition to the other buffs they gave, in a way that clearly demonstrated how you weren't "giving up" anything else to get that (like if all HamiOs just had inherent debt reduction AND also buffed two aspects of a power like they did).

In short, more rules leads to "more game" and more game, often, to more fun. That's not always a one-to-one trade-off, you can get overly complex, which is to be avoided, but I don't think debt crosses that line.

I would make the "death tax" higher for level capped toons as opposed to those still leveling up though. As an IGC sink that makes the most sense.

In Magic, you can summon creatures and then use them to attack your opponent. You can also use your creatures to block your opponent's creatures when they attack you. But there are many rules that limit how that works, which rules have exceptions that make different individual creatures better or worse.

1. Creatures cannot attack the turn they come into play, they have "summoning sickness" per the general game rules. Creatures with the "Haste" keyword ability get to ignore this and attack right away. It's good to have Haste. If the overall rules didn't include summoning sickness in the first place (which sounds like a drag, because it means you have to wait a turn to attack), there would be no need for or definition of the Haste ability.

2. Attacking requires the creature to become "tapped" meaning that it is no longer able to perform actions for the turn. Tapped creatures cannot block incoming attackers, for example. Some creatures have a keyword ability called "Vigilance" which says "remains untapped when when attacking". Again, if attacking did not have the "cost" that it causes creatures to become tapped, then there would be no need for Vigilance.

3. When a creature attacks and is blocked, it deals all of it's damage to the creature blocking it, even if it could deal a lot more than is needed to kill the blocker. If I attack with a giant dinosaur with a power of 9, and you block it with a goblin with a toughness of 1, all 9 of the dino's damage get's absorbed by the gobbo and the gobbo's owner takes no damage in that case UNLESS the dinosaur has Trample, which would then mean that the excess damage "rolls over" to the owner instead.

If we hadn't INTENTIONALLY set up the rules to be very limiting in the first place, all of this rich, interesting, gamey-ness would not be there for us to play with. Is a smallish creature with Haste better or worse than a larger creature with Trample? Well, what's the mana cost to summon them? If one requires red mana and the other green mana, what are my other options in terms of spells for my deck? Do I like the red spells and maybe they cause me to play the less-awesome red creatures? Or do I play the awesome green creatures and then make do with with the not-as-awesome green spells? There are now meaningful choices to make.

I like positives like Tannim222's post. I'm thinking mission superlatives (in addition to objectives).
NO TEAM WIPE
NO TEAM DEATHS
NO PERSONAL DEATHS
These could feed into badges or other systems. For completionists this could be a strong motivator for not dying.

So long as folks don't start abandoning task forces because of a team wipe...

Hero_Zero wrote:
I like positives like Tannim222's post. I'm thinking mission superlatives (in addition to objectives).
NO TEAM WIPE
NO TEAM DEATHS
NO PERSONAL DEATHS
These could feed into badges or other systems. For completionists this could be a strong motivator for not dying.
So long as folks don't start abandoning task forces because of a team wipe...

Of the two games I'm currently playing - SWL and FFXIV - FFXIV has a bit of an issue with this in endgame raids. It is incredibly frustrating for new players trying to experience it. It seems to me that more and more players have way too thin skins this day in age, and if they can't "finish in one pull" they want to give up :(

Hero_Zero wrote:
I like positives like Tannim222's post. I'm thinking mission superlatives (in addition to objectives).
NO TEAM WIPE
NO TEAM DEATHS
NO PERSONAL DEATHS
These could feed into badges or other systems. For completionists this could be a strong motivator for not dying.
So long as folks don't start abandoning task forces because of a team wipe...

Of the two games I'm currently playing - SWL and FFXIV - FFXIV has a bit of an issue with this in endgame raids. It is incredibly frustrating for new players trying to experience it. It seems to me that more and more players have way too thin skins this day in age, and if they can't "finish in one pull" they want to give up :(

Hero_Zero wrote:
I like positives like Tannim222's post. I'm thinking mission superlatives (in addition to objectives).
NO TEAM WIPE
NO TEAM DEATHS
NO PERSONAL DEATHS
These could feed into badges or other systems. For completionists this could be a strong motivator for not dying.
So long as folks don't start abandoning task forces because of a team wipe...

As a "badger" I had a lot of experience doing "Master of" task force runs in CoH. I probably did a few hundred Master runs before the game shut down. Just for anyone out there who doesn't know what I'm talking about there were many trials in CoH that you could optionally select to run so that if no one died during the entire run then the team members would get a "you completed the Master version of Trial X" badge instead of just the normal "you completed Trial X" badge.

So anyway out of all the Master trial runs I did maybe only 5% were with completely random PUGs. This means that pretty much everyone who wanted to go for the Master runs were serious enough about trying to get the Master badge for it that if somebody did accidentally wipe then usually everyone on the team was willing to start over to try it again. I basically rarely if ever saw a situation as you suggest where a few people would unilaterally drop from a Master team just because someone died halfway through. Sure it happened, but it was so rare that it was not something to generally worry about.

Basically badgers needed other badgers to help them get badges so anyone serious about badging usually didn't screw each other over like that. ;)

Basically badgers needed other badgers to help them get badges so anyone serious about badging usually didn't screw each other over like that.

I think this is an important point that has ramifications throughout the gameplay experience. And not just with obtaining badges, but for accomplishing anything of a higher difficulty or challenge.

Some of my best experiences are playing with a bunch of dedicated players who didn't want to quit, no matter what. A group of newbies who don't know the mechanics of a fight can be so much fun to play with as we watch each other learn and grow and finally beat the content. That pride in accomplishment can not be duplicated, and is really why I play MMO and not single player games.

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I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Of the two games I'm currently playing - SWL and FFXIV - FFXIV has a bit of an issue with this in endgame raids. It is incredibly frustrating for new players trying to experience it. It seems to me that more and more players have way too thin skins this day in age, and if they can't "finish in one pull" they want to give up :(
SWL I haven't gotten to endgame so I can't speak for it.

It actually happens before true endgame in SWL, usually around E5 difficulty for dungeons. People via the queue (or General/LFG channels) don't want to even try the more difficult dungeons. What they do instead is farm the first boss. Form up, fight the first boss (which usually has limited or virtual zero encounter/fight mechanics), collect their loot, then vote to retreat. Rinse and repeat until they've spent all their lootchest keys. This is not always the case but its certainly gaining traction and popularity.
I will say this; there has been quite a bit of effort on the part of the SWL devs to make the endgame content, such as lair megabosses and game event raids, more accessible to the general playerbase by making them absolutely public (via the Public Raid platform in the main playerhub Agartha). This has both pros and cons, neither of which I'll list here because it's outside the scope of the post. Additionally, the devs even got more on board with people using the Raid interface to do Lairs with 10 players, where it was originally intended to be accomplished with five "well geared level 50s".

In COH you are teleported to a hospital away from the conflict.
There is no penalty, but you pay for the defeat with a percentage point drain on experience earned for a while afterwards. I liked the system. It worked.
How will defeat work in CoT?

Both (all) systems have their advantages and drawbacks from a development point of view
They also have to take the single and multiplayer aspects into account.

The first question a designer has to ask him- or herself is: what is the purpose of a death mechanic?
In some games the death mechanic is intricately tied to the gameplay mechanic (.e.g stealth games that make a player wait until it is time to hurry for a few seconds. Here the price of failure to wait and act at the right moment is to wait longer, so a death mechanic that forces a player to wait (and observe) is the logical choice).
In other usually older games death mechics were part of the money drain, which in part kept player power under control. This works better in tabletop and DMed games where the faucet of money is tightly controlled than it does in MMO which tend to suffer from rampant inflaction. In either case though the cost of death is usually in repair and resurrection cost. E.g. Everquest still has this mechanic where any player can get a full resurrection but at a cost. Of course in a game where players routinely carry around billions of platinum coins a resurrection stone costing 1000 is not a deterrent.
Then there is the third common, and most popular, reason for having a death mechanic: providing a teachable moment. Here the game basically uses death as an implicit message to the player saying: well, that didn't work. Think you should try another approach? Or another mission entirely?

The penalty here can be pretty harsh or soft, as the developers see fit. CoH actually had one of the harsher penalties of the major MMOs at the time (though not as harsh as e.g. Everquest), by making the player leave the mission and travel back to it from the hospital. WoW by comparison had players simply run back safely and relatively quickly and continue exactly where they failed. SW:TOR has an interesting hybrid here in that players can self-rez where they fail, but that each repeated rez doubles the delay before the rez comes available. Players can also opt to return to the cantina, but that means travelling back to the start of the zone and redo much of the travelling and clearing the way to the mission entrance, and possible the entire mission as well. This allows players to quickly recover from one or two mistakes, but if the defeats pile up there comes a point that the death mechanic becomes so burdensome that players are forced to ask themselves if continueing is worthwhile, and why they are failing so badly.
One of the most severe failure punishment, and heavy handed reminder of players to get better at the game, is Dark Souls where you have exactly one chance to recover from a failure before all your potential progress you had collected until that point is irretrievably lost.
The harshest penalty of course is in rogue likes where failure is an instant restart of the entire game.

Of course as soon as you throw in multiplayer groups then the mechanics and possibilities alter. rogue likes go out of the window, as do most of the harshest penalty systems. You do NOT want to lose progress because another player makes a mistake. It would /not/ improve the atmosphere in the game (which in highly competitive games already isn't too brilliant to begin with). On the other hand, you gain specific player interactions like shielding and rezzing. You have to be careful with that though, as it may make certain classes or abilities indispensible in the eyes of the players, especially if the death mechanic is otherwise still fairly harsh.

As soon as you decide what the point is of your death mechanic and how harsh or punitive it should be, there remains the matching second question: What is the sense of fun that players get out of it? Here milder is not always better. Just being forced to run back isn't much fun. Having to redo much of what you already did can be annoying. Of course being able to tell yourself 'well, that was stupid, I can do better this time' and jump right back into the action does wonders for the pacing of the game and the sense of accomplishment if the second attempt at beating a combat puzzle placed before. On the other hand, venturing into unknown territory with an hour of progression on the line does wonders for the thrill of danger and the sense of accomplishment if you sneak past all the dangers and find a safe spot.
There is no clear single good answer here. It depends on how the game engages the player and if, and how, the death mechanic ties into that. In games like Everquest of Dark Souls the relatively harsh penalties work because those games (and the ones like them) also challenge the players on different levels. Games like SW:TOR with its extreme casual friendliness wouldn't engage the players with a harsh penalty system because the game itself does not challenge players that way. (the old game Dungeon Siege was infamous that with a properly set up NPC group you could be AFK for hours and on return see that your group even without your help had pulled itself thorugh one of the regions and was waiting for you at the zone line to make up your mind. Several modern mobile games are the same in that they essentially play themselves, relegating the player to the one feeding more coins into the slot machine to keep the lightshow going. In games like this a harsh death penalty would not be engaging the players, certainly not in the same way the game itself does).
Important is that the wayt the death mechanic resolves for the player engages in more or less the same way that the gameplay itself does, or you risk a dissonance in the player which may throw them out of the flow. Do that too often and the player will quit rather than retry.

After the previous two questions got sorted out for a game, there remains the final question of 'how much is the deaht mechanic going to cost the players'. Regardless of if the penalty is expressed in time, ingame money or progress, the developers have to decide how much they will charge the player. This may be constant or cumulative as best fits the /why/ of the death mechanic and how punitive the system should feel (as fits they overal aesthetic of the game).

Not strictly part of the decisions on the death mechanic is the last question that developers must answer before making their system final, and that is: How can this system be abused and what will it do to the game.
The biggest danger here is if the system encourages zerging an encounter. In worst cases this will run afoul of the 'once is always' rule and make NPCs that were supposedly unkillable targets of trolling players (the way in early WoW raids could kill off all shopkeepers in main cities for hours on end, blocking progress by low level players)

There is also the difference between playing an MMO solo or in groups, and this can (should?) affect decisions regarding the death mechanic, though this depends on if the game is intended to be played solo (like SW:TOR) or in groups (like CoH). In the first case grouping is basically a way to make an easy game even easier. In the second solo play can be seen as a challenge mode (and yes I am aware that some players play solo out of necessity). The first should not have any meaningful difference in death mechanics between solo and group players. The second however easily could. Not the fundamental system of course (keeping track of solo versus group status is not worth the effort by server if it even can be done at all). But recovery systems that are only useful for single players could very well be made a harsher penalty. E.g. wakies, being a limited resource that has to be earned through gameplay could carry a relatvely severe XP debt but no other penalty, evacuations would have a small xp debt but a relatively large time cost. Self rezzes, being unlimited, would have both a sizeable XP debt cost and a cumulative re-use timer. Targeted rezzes would have a smaller XP debt penalty and a re-use timer that builds up much slower.
XP debt should not be capped (i.e. you keep building up) and should gradually increase the amount of XP used to pay off that debt as well (so players who max out both due to poor gameplay would eventually halt all progress and be forced to get stronger and/or smarter first before they can take on challenges again). I am also of an opinion that players who hit the 100% of all XP earned goes to debt state should be hit with an immediate XP loss on further debt but that may be too severe a penalty depending on what the developers feel is appropriate, I just think that games that are so easy as to have a 'you win' state stop being fun after a very short time and that the thrill comes from not just the chance that you fail in your rask, but also that that failure comes with a cost that you will really notice.

If classes end up with permadebt, the way early blasters did in CoH, then that is a class design issue, not a problem with the death mechanic. Any class should be survivable if played in the spirit of that class (meaning that blasters need to have a way to keep out of melee range and take less damage from ranged weapons same as other ranged classes, while melee classes need to be able to stay in melee range and take less damage there).

p.s. there is an alarming trend in not just mobile games but increasingly in AAA ones as well, to use death mechanics not as a teachable moment but as a /marketing/ one. This is extremely profitable for the publisher of the game but it is also extremely off-putting for the players after a (short) while.

I've refrained from commenting in this thread because I thought it was a simple question directed to the devs. The discussion of death penalties, how harsh they should be suggestions on how to handle it, etc., etc. has been thoroughly discussed in this thread and this thread. In fact, MWM did have this comment in one of those threads:

Terwyn wrote:

It goes without saying, we're taking notes on this thread.

I know I'm not the forum police, so I don't have a say on who posts what where. I just want to point people to those other threads and maybe see if their ideas have already been discussed or maybe we can pick up those discussions where they left off.

I'm still holding out for an answer from MWM on the OP.

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I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I've refrained from commenting in this thread because I thought it was a simple question directed to the devs. The discussion of death penalties, how harsh they should be suggestions on how to handle it, etc., etc. has been thoroughly discussed in this thread and this thread. In fact, MWM did have this comment in one of those threads:
Terwyn wrote:
It goes without saying, we're taking notes on this thread.
I know I'm not the forum police, so I don't have a say on who posts what where. I just want to point people to those other threads and maybe see if their ideas have already been discussed or maybe we can pick up those discussions where they left off.
I'm still holding out for an answer from MWM on the OP.

We have a bunch of ideas. We need game testing to know which ideas will work the way expected.

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Technical Director

Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider

Doctor Tyche wrote:
We have a bunch of ideas. We need game testing to know which ideas will work the way expected.
Does that mean what Tannim said above has become the subject of a change that we're always warned everything said on the forums by MWM can be? If so I'll be sad; I really liked what was being planned.

Just stating what he said in a different way.

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Technical Director

Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider

When we die, let's just not have a story lore reason of "Teleport system to the hospital!"
Best to just make it meta and say, "You revived yourself." if they're not using a power to do it.

I'd prefer the mediport reasoning over "You revived yourself" as quite a few of my characters would have had no easy way to explain the how. On the other hand relatively few of my characters had reason -not- to be mediported.

Though if we can customize how it looks when we go to respawn then it can really be anything.